Jen McCreight blogs about giving a talk at a meeting of Mensa, the “international high-IQ society.” Worth reading in its own right, but I was struck by one anecdote in particular: the color-coded stickers that indicated huggability.
- Green = Hug me!
- Yellow = Ask me first
- Red = Don’t touch me
You read this correctly. A group of self-selected high-IQ people feels the need to have stickers on their name tags to let strangers know whether it’s okay to come up and hug them. As Jen put it: “I originally didn’t put any stickers on because I had no idea what they meant, but after being hugged out of nowhere by a complete stranger, my badge quickly looked like this:”
I don’t think the stickers are a bad idea; if they help people figure out appropriate ways to behave, it’s all good. But I can’t help but think that there are many other groups of people who would manage to negotiate this particular social minefield without the help of any stickers at all. There are many different ways to be “intelligent.”
My badge (when I attend Mensa things with those codes) looks like hers — two red dots, by which I mean “touch me and die.” I am not a huggy person. *shudders*
But in what other contexts could people who *like* to be hugged share that while mingling in big crowds, while at the same time ensuring that others who prefer personal space won’t be bothered? Without a code of some kind, very few get hugs — even if they want them. At the Mensa things, one is essentially unambiguously signaling about one’s personal space. People avoid misunderstandings, and are happy.
Yes, there are many, many different ways to be intelligent.
Understanding human interaction takes a lot of mental processing power. Why not avoid part of that mess if it’s as easily avoidable as a simple sticker? Then you can go back to thinking about more interesting things.
Seems simple and brilliant. My idea of Mensa people is unimaginative types who can’t outfox Columbo but this looks like a neat social hack. How often have you hugged a stranger in real life? Yet how often have you needed a hug and lacked a ready supply? More people with stickers, imo. At the moment we assume that everyone is going around with red dots… but they aren’t really, are they?
Obviously animals are better at advertising their heat than human. Indeed, too much brain actually kill many subconcious instinct.
I wonder how much of that social-minefield navigation involves people getting unwanted hugs and suffering in silence. “When in doubt, keep your hands to yourself” is always a good rule to go by, but it’s not all that universally followed.
More unambiguous communication of personal boundaries, please.
I imagine a disproportionate number of mensa-ites have Aspergers, or other forms of autism, which would definitely make it handy to have a hug sticker on.
AG: Indeed. It’s the convention of never hugging strangers that developed as a ‘too smart’ solution to our confused ability to read each other. Given that poor ability, these Mensoids have thought some more and found a solution to the solution, bringing us closer to our animal instincts. Nice!
Right. Or you could get crazy and try to… I don’t know… TALK to each other and TELL that you don’t want to be hugged by strangers.
Nah, that would be silly.
Daneel: that protocol is flawed for reasons the Mensans surely noticed. The aim is to simulate our natural-but-subdued instincts, which means needing to bypass the thinky-talky stuff. You could train yourself to be present with meditation, or take mdma for a quicker solution, but I think coloured stickers – using thought to escape thought – is very elegant.
The Mensa approach is not facilitating human interaction, but mechanizing it. It is not “bringing us closer to our animal instincts”; it is replacing them.
It is like replacing an aquarium of fish by an electronic fish display; or a pet dog by a GENIBO.
If you want to avoid the mental processing required to understand human interaction, why not just forget about the whole thing? Delegate / outsource it to email.
If someone can’t tell whether I want a hug or not, then I don’t want it from that person anyway: Yuck!
What color sticker for a mind meld???
Neal: no, because once you’ve been hugged or not hugged as preferred you don’t care whether it was instinct or simulated instinct. People in the wild, never mind Mensoans, have already abnegated their instincts. Or do you give and receive hugs whenever you want them? I hugged a complete stranger in the street once – she visibly needed it – and I still tell people the story because it was a sufficiently odd thing to do. I agree with the sentiment behind the stickers that says it shouldn’t be considered odd, and recognising the difference between hug-wanters and hug-avoiders is the necessary first step.
Daneel/8: I think Kevin/6 is probably right in thinking that a disproportionate amount of people in Mensa have Aspergers or are at least fairly introverted.
As someone who is quite introverted, I can say that social cues and interaction do not come naturally for a lot of people. And, at least for me, it just seems to be something my brain isn’t wired for. I’ve picked things up over the years, but it’s more of a database than a natural reaction. You also learn pretty quick (at least in America) that saying you’d rather not be hugged or that telling people you’d rather not hear their entire thought process is not received well. Partly because communicating these things in a tactful way is similarly difficult as interpreting social cues. So there’s an extent to which one learns to suffer some things in silence.
It’s as baffling to some people why one would hug strangers or tell you everything they are thinking as they are thinking it as it is for others why one has a hard time expressing they would rather not be hugged by strangers.
This is awesome. it reminds me of the recent work on how Emperor penguins stay warm by rotating in and out of a huge huggy scrum of penguins.
But wouldn’t it be so much easier if EVERYONE just set their badge to yellow for a day? Isn’t that really better? because that would encourage people to take risks and ask strangers if hugging is allowed (for people who like to hug) and also allow everyone to practice setting healthy and appropriate boundaries? Isn’t “ask first” just a good, 100% all purpose social rule for all occasions, from asking someone out on a date to borrowing their pencil?
Occam’s razor, friends! keep it simple!
@Neal, @Daneel, One of my favorite quotes
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses
remove it.
— A. Perlis
This shirt says it all
http://www.spiffystudios.com/mensa-shirt/
Read up on Rebecca Watson’s recent incident in the elevator. Then tell me that ambiguity is a good idea. Having easy-to-read stickers is a great way to avoid a sexual harassment scandal when you’d rather not have one.
I’m not by nature a ‘huggy’ person either… but frankly, I envy those who are, and this seems much ado about not much — we’d probably be emotionally better off as a society if everyone was huggy.
And literally, I’d regard shaking lots of hands as an even less favorable (and less healthy) practice… how about stickers to avoid that!!
I know it’s the new blog in-thing, but less mocking of ‘those socially dumb smart people’, please.
I would expect something like 5% of Mensans to be red-green color-blind. That would lead to some awkward moments.
I think this is in obvious response to the whole Rebecca Watson, skepchick, guy-in-the-elevator, Richard-Dawkins’-completely-obtuse-response mash up of last weekend. Check Phil Plait’s blog post about it all.
This is hardly surprising (nor is it unintelligent.) Frequently people on the high end of the IQ spectrum (which is the measurement MENSA uses for admittance) are not as socially adept as people more in the middle of the bell curve. Many high IQ individuals have a form of autism or Aspergers and may have difficulty with “obvious” social cues like body language, posture, and facial expression. However, while you’re struggling to balance your check book, they’re figuring out how to get supplies into space, or solve the global water crisis, or grow “meat” in a vat. They’re fixing the world while you mock their superior intelligence and their decision to use easy-to-read visual cues to communicate personal space. No, you don’t sound bitter at ALL dude.
Isn’t there a more-or-less universal etiquette about touching/hugging people you don’t know? Offer your hand to shake when introduced. Otherwise, just don’t touch them.
Ian… wow, I just read some of that mess. It’s off-topic but that shows exactly why I find atheists so petty and tedious.
Joel: yes, the no contact rule has become standard; it’s due to us not trusting our instincts, and it’s a great loss to society. Coloured stickers are a good first step to changing the narrative for the better.
Let’s be clear – it is the people who use hugging someone they’ve just met, or someone they don’t know very well, as an act of greeting who are the ones who are socially unintelligent.
Unfortunately, hugging has somehow fallen into common use as an act of casual greeting, and I think this is a horrible idea. Hugging should be a more intimate act for a more intimate moment, not something you do to someone you’ve just met or to whom you’re just saying hello. Add cheek-kissing to that list as well. It really bothers me when I see women at formal functions being kissed for everything while their male counterparts shake hands. Don’t put your body in my personal space, and don’t put your lips on my face, until you really know me and have a good reason to.